Recent Blog Posts

Even with all the attention focused on mobile-device apps for everything from ride sharing and Instagram to music streaming, the semiconductor industry still holds sway for passionate engineers who want to make a difference – even if the application is far removed from the consumer experience. One such example involves a couple of savvy engineers [...]

Lots of images come to mind when someone tells you to “go play in the sandbox.” Designing an IoT device is generally not on that list — until now. As shown in this demonstration, the Renesas IoT Sandbox lets developers easily create IoT applications using cloud services and real-time workflows – and you’re not locked [...]

The zigbee alliance recently introduced dotdot, a universal language for the Internet of Things (IoT) that works on the application layer to enable communication across different networking technologies. It can be seen as an extension of the zigbee Cluster Library (ZCL) specification used to issue commands across zigbee 3.0’s interoperable application layer. In addition to the application layer remaining slim, [...]

Outsourced document storage has seen a huge rise in popularity over recent years. Primarily used for business files, some of a company’s most sensitive data is finding a home offsite and without the need for paper. With that in mind, understanding how secure document storage systems are is imperative. Both providers and those utilizing the [...]

Of course good things come in small packages. We all know that. And that’s sort of the case with Express Logic’s X-Ware industrial-grade IoT device-to-cloud connectivity platform. It obviously doesn’t ship in a physical package, but it does boast very small size, potentially just 25 kbytes. It’s designed for fast, safe, secure, industrial-grade connectivity of [...]

Wouldn’t it be great to developing your embedded system without actually having any hardware in your hand (or on your desk)? That’s what you get when you work with Packet, a relatively new player in the embedded systems space. In this week’s Five Minutes with…segment, I spoke to Zachary Smith, CEO of Packet, and asked [...]

Wrapping up embedded world 2017 from their hotel bar, the Embedded Insiders, Rich Nass and Brandon Lewis of Embedded Computing Design, discuss some of the highlights they saw on Day 3 of the show. While safety and security remained a big theme, Nass also had the opportunity to discuss advances in GE’s Predix platform with [...]

Frank Redmer of Quanta continues his tour of the Quanta booth at embedded world 2017 (Hall 2, Booth 418), where he shows Embedded Computing Design’s Technology Editor Brandon Lewis a variety of smart home solutions. Centered around the Quanta EQL Hub, smart home devices are able to link to the gateway via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and [...]

The hands-free personal assistant that you can wake on voice and talk to naturally has significantly gained popularity the last couple of years. This kind of technology made its debut not all that long ago as a feature of Motorola’s MotoX, a smartphone that had always-listening Moto Voice technology powered by Sensory’s TrulyHandsfree technology. Since [...]

The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) has created a new set of security considerations for the cloud. Now not only do you need to safeguard the data inside an IoT gateway or node, but you must also ensure the device can securely communicate with cloud servers – and this has become one of [...]

Some notable companies were absent from the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center where automotive technology is usually on display at CES, but not because they weren’t at the show. At CES 2017, the Gold Lot parking lot was opened up to vehicle-to-everything (V2X) companies for the first time to accommodate demonstrations required [...]

One of the most significant developments in the world of wireless connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT) of late has been the advent of multi-protocol wireless system on chips (SoCs), and at CES 2017 they were in no short supply. To this end, Cypress Semiconductor was showing its single-chip CYW43907 Wi-Fi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth [...]

2016 was another exciting year for the embedded industry highlighted by emerging Internet of Things (IoT) platforms and the sensors, embedded systems, and network topologies to support them. Here we review the embedded highlights of 2016 and look forward at emerging trends for 2017 and what’s driving them. 2016 embedded year in review 2016 [...]

You’ve chosen your processor for your Internet of Things (IoT) application and you’re ready to move forward in the design process. What’s your next step? Join us on December 14 at 11 a.m. ET for day two of Embedded University’s Processing 101 with the Intel Atom series, entitled “Building Out Your IoT Application.” You’ll be guided [...]

The mbed OS has seen its ups and downs, but with the release of mbed OS 5 earlier this year, all that seems to be behind it. At the u-blox booth at ARM TechCon, I had the opportunity to meet with Pelle Svenson, Product Marketing Manager for u-blox, who was demonstrating newly integrated support of [...]

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been touted as the next Industrial Revolution, with pervasive connectivity and the insights it can generate offering a new digital lens for viewing and managing the physical world. But in addition to the tangible process efficiencies and quality of life improvements expected from the IoT, it’s also a stepping [...]

With all the gadgets we use each day, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that many of these devices have processing power equal to the old computer towers from just a decade ago. Add the Internet of Things (IoT) to the equation, and we’re generating a mind-blowing amount of data every second of [...]

Dell has a history of getting involved in specifications and consortia. To that end, when Embedded Computing Design’s IoT Roadshow hit Austin, Texas, Brent Hodges, a Liaison to Consortia at Dell, spent a few minutes with me explaining the company’s position and how it ends up as the proverbial “win-win” for OEMs and end users. [...]

In the first two installments of this blog series, we initially looked at the challenges introduced by cloud-centric architectures and how they motivated the rise of fog computing. Next, we defined what fog computing really means and the kind of problems it solves. For completeness, we need to also introduce mist computing. Have you ever [...]

The Internet of Things (IoT) has caught fire and many industries are seeing initial rollouts of these solutions that promise to provide significant value to both customer and vendor. The natural reaction is to treat this as a technology initiative, focusing on how best to bring together data from smart, connected devices. And in certain [...]

We’re currently witnessing rapidly expanding product launches and sky high expectations from the emerging deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT) in both personal and commercial domains. Stakeholders ranging from hardware manufacturers and service providers to cloud platforms are vigorously weighing in to position their offerings in anticipation of windfall rewards from accelerated IoT adoption. While vendors are in [...]

If you listen hard enough, you can hear the sighs of millions of parents worldwide fretting about the future of their Minecraft/Xbox/League of Legends-addicted kids. The kids that will spend hours researching Minecraft crafting recipes, Xbox game strategies, and League of Legends Champion capabilities, all at the expense of homework and family participation time. The jury has spoken, and [...]

The first installment of this blog series raised a lot of engaging online discussions. Many of the comments have reinforced the interest in Fog Computing as an essential paradigm for a large class of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Some of them have highlighted that a few misconceptions still exist around this new paradigm. [...]

The Internet of Things is primed to change the way we understand and interact with the world around us, not only in the technology industry but for the man on the street as well. The IoT Design Podcast is a series of audio interviews with Internet of Things experts – from the industrial, security, cloud, [...]

It’s easy to call the hardware portion of the IoT subsystem a commodity. And in some instances, actually many instances, you’d be right. But there are some nuances that make some hardware providers shine above the others. I had a discussion with Matthias Huber, a vice president at ADLINK Technology, about this topic. He was [...]

I could come up with a lot of reasons why I wouldn’t want to develop my IoT system on an open-source platform. Apparently, there are just as many reasons where the opposite thinking is true, and maybe more, as Mike Piech, Red Hat’s Middleware VP an...

Red Hat has an interesting take on IoT, which I found out when our IoT Roadshow traveled up to Massachusetts. When I asked Ken Johnson, Senior Director of Product Management for Red Hat what it’s all about, he looked at it from a perspective that I had not thought about before, and one that I [...]

Learn how to leverage Node.js, Python, and the MediaTek Cloud Sandbox to push firmware updates over-the-air instantly to a LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo board. Goal: The following describes how to use SSH and the MediaTek Cloud Sandbox to deploy firmware over-...

Embedded TechCon moves to Austin this year on June 7th and 8th, and, just like last year, the program consists of 20 hands-on classes that are designed to be immediately actionable. In other words, lessons learned during the two days of Embedded TechCon – and in some cases actual hardware and software – can be taken back to the lab [...]

The Phoenix leg of the IoT Roadshow took us to Microchip. Steve Porter, Microchip’s IoT Applications Engineering Manager, showed me a board that performs IoT over Ethernet and is aptly named the IoT Ethernet Kit (DM990004). The kit is powered by Amazon Web Services’ AWS IoT platform and offers a great out-of-box experience (meaning that set-up is a snap), [...]

Everybody is trying to put a stake in the ground as far as IoT is concerned, or at least it sure feels that way. Dell is no exception, and they’re putting their money (and their servers and gateways) where their mouth is. Dell recently released a bun...

The first stop of the OpenSystems Media IoT Roadshow took Rich Nass to San Jose, CA and Ayla Networks, an IoT platform as a service (PaaS) solution provider. There he spoke with Rod McLane, the company’s Senior Director of Product Marketing, on t...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is clearly the hottest buzzword in the embedded space at the moment. To many people (and likely TOO many people), the IoT is about collecting mounds of data. What people should really be looking at is what you do with all t...

In the headlong rush to deploy devices and deliver on the promise of the Internet of Things (IoT), device management systems, which are a critical component of any IoT system, are often overlooked. As understandable as that may be, that critical component makes up the framework that surrounds and supports the deployment of millions of [...]

Just a few short years ago, “cloud” was the buzzword du jour. Terminology for an assortment of aaSes (or as-a-Service architectures) was being bandied about with the distinctions between them known only to a select few, and fewer still in the embed...

Each layer of the Internet of Things (IoT) has different implementation requirements, leaving a vacancy in tools that span from edge to cloud for improve data analytics. The Internet of Things (IoT) begins and ends at the “leaf” or “edge” nodes of the network. This is where sensors and actuators, under the control of [...]

Over the past couple of years, I have routinely hinted at the rise of development kits, the Internet of Things (IoT), and how the two go hand in hand. It’s a serendipitous relationship that facilitates quick development and prototyping in a large, fast-growing market – not to mention that an increasing number of kits can [...]

Companies struggle with reliable device signaling for a myriad of reasons: security, dropped connections, catch-up on missed data, firewall/NAT environments, scaling, reliability, replication, redundancy, etc. Much like with CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) such as Akamai, many companies prefer to use a service already proven to work and scale, and instead focus on what they really [...]

Everyone familiar with Siri, Google Now, Cortana, S-Voice, and/or Echo is familiar with the progress and improvement in speech recognition over the past decade. Much of this improvement comes from cloud-based recognizers deploying “deep learning” on big data. Although it’s often out of the spotlight, there’s been lots of progress in speech recognition for embedded [...]

OpenStack turned five this year, and in so doing garnered quite a nice birthday gift: the official backing of Google. Google’s decision to join the OpenStack Foundation marks the first time that one of the “big three” public infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) vendors – Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google – has backed OpenStack, a free open-source cloud platform long seen as a [...]